


Horrible, lonely year.

by thephilosophah



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Gen, cycle 65, does it count as major character death if they reset at the end of the year
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-02
Updated: 2020-02-02
Packaged: 2021-02-27 22:47:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,340
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22533478
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thephilosophah/pseuds/thephilosophah
Summary: We must find the seventh harbinger.(This is when Lucretia became Madam Director.)
Relationships: The Director | Lucretia & IPRE Crew | Starblaster Crew
Comments: 10
Kudos: 23





	Horrible, lonely year.

**Author's Note:**

> so. this was fun to write. do you wanna guess when i wrote it? july. i wrote this in july. seven goddamn months ago. enjoy!

She drops her shielding spell.

She hadn't meant for it to go up. She hadn't thought about it. The humming had turned into a buzz that turned into a tremble in the air, and before she knew it, Lucretia had her shield up around her.

Stupid, stupid...

She jumps to the ship's controls and straps herself in. She turns on the autopilot and directs it above the city's skyline - low and marble white, save for the very center of it - and the ship jerks, she doesn't know what hit it, she doesn't know where it's hit, but she fights to keep it up.

She turns on her stone. If someone is calling her-- they're not. Nothing comes in.

She circles through the frequencies of all of her friends' stones, they're turned off, off, they're all--

Merle has his on. He must've forgotten to turn it off, he always does--

Lucretia hears the whole trial.

  
  
  
  
  


Her sight is still blurry with tears when she unbuckles herself from her seat and steps out onto the deck. She looks behind her, off to portside, and sees them.

She counts four, four like the voices that judged her friends.

They don't know where she is. They said so. They'll look for her, they said they will.

They killed her family.

Lucretia collapses right there on the deck.

On her hands and knees, she makes it back to the helm.

She doesn't know how to fly the damn thing, and it's been going for close to an hour, the shore of the massive lake surrounding this city is nowhere to be found.

A ship is a ship is a ship, when it crashes down it floats, but just barely.

She's hyperventilating.

  
  
  
  
  


She finds out where the Starblaster was hit. Port and down. It's pouring water.

She doesn't even know how to repair the damn thing.

Captain-- Captain Davenport would know how to. He knows how to pilot it, he could fix any damage imaginable done to the ship. He should've--

He should've been the one in her place.

If not him, Barry - so curious about everything, Lucretia has seen him pilot enough times to know he can do it just fine. And he'd know how to fix a damn water-leaking hole, too. Lup-- Taako, so fucking powerful, neither of them would have to lift a finger to fix this mess. Merle wouldn't fucking freeze with panic at the sight of damage on the hull of the ship, and shit, Magnus in Lucretia's place would already be in the process of fixing it.

Any one of them-- literally anyone else. Anyone.

With Magnus comes another thought, and Lucretia drops her panic and goes running up to the chambers.

Fisher.

It's fine, oh thank fuck, it's fine.

"Hey, buddy," Lucretia says. Is that her voice? That sounded like a sob. "Hey. You okay?"

It waves its tendrils underneath it.

"Cool, cool. Listen, There's a big hole in the ship, do you know how to fix it?"

Okay great. She's taking smithing advice from a voidfish. Great. The panic has officially turned her brainbits into oatmeal.

"Okay how about you stay right here, and uh- don't worry! I'll think of something. Um, I'll be right back."

The ship is still filling up with water, and here she is chatting up Fisher.

She runs back down. On the way she picks up whatever metal she can find, old weapons, a copper plate, some parts of the hull that got blasted inside. Standing close to inspect the damage, the water is up to her hips.

She pulls out her wand.

She finds a wedge of scrap that more or less would fit into one of the longer cracks and holds it up. She can't shove it in, no way. Not with the water pushing back, and not with how she's literally holding a lance up to a zagged crack.

She scrunches her eyes shut and holds a barrier along the hull. She has to look to set the lance aflame - and it doesn't catch fire, of course it doesn't - but it softens bright orange and she shoves it in place as well as she can without burning herself. She burns along the crack a little more, sealing it in, this will work, it has to, it's working--

She drops the barrier, checks how it holds up against the water.

The lance immediately wedges out of the crack and goes flying past her, steaming as it cools.

She might scream.

  
  
  
  
  


It takes her so long to figure it out that the ship completely submerges. Her priority shifts from fixing the damage to emptying the water, then back to fixing, then back to water. Covered by the lake, the Judges won't find her - they said they'd search, but searching here? No.

She manages to rip the panelings off the robot parts on the ship and bolts them to the hole in the hull.

It holds.

Thinking to use the panels took her so much time, never mind figuring out the bolting--

She empties the ship, and it surfaces.

"Fisher? Fisher, we're up again. I'm gonna let some fresh air in. I guess you wouldn't mind, since you're in a tank anyway..."

Far, far in the distance, she can still see the city. It's far, but it's still close enough to see the four Judges in the center.

She swears they move when she looks at them.

She forgets all about fresh air.

  
  
  
  
  


She finds the shore of the lake. When she looks behind her, she's not sure she can see the city anymore. She thinks she can, but it could be confirmation bias.

Okay. No more water. She has to fly the damn thing.

Automated take off.

Auto-pilot.

She feels uncomfortable sitting in Davenport's chair.

"Alright," she murmurs. "Alright, stay calm. It's automated."

Starblaster has never flown so slow when Davenport was sitting here.

Lucretia groans. Okay. What next?

What would Davenport do?

It hits her like warhammer to the neck. He's dead.

They all are.

She's the only one left, the only one who can get away from The Hunger - if she does that, that's all she has to do. A year and then running away, and her friends would be back, she'd have her family back--

She is alone.

She digs her nails into her palms.

"What. Would. Davenport. Do." She grits her teeth, rubs her eyes with the back of her hand.

Take crew recommendation, and check outside the city, since the inside didn't work.

She keeps flying.

  
  
  
  
  


The first settlement she finds is only a handful of tents cluttered together around an unstable-looking shelter of wood. All of it is white and grey, just like the rest of this world.

Lucretia gives herself a wide berth to land. Automated or not, she does not know how to fly this damn thing.

The first thing she does once she walks outside is check the damage from this side, now that she can stand and inspect instead of having to swim and squint through the dusty water.

The bluish dark paneling looks incredibly ugly on Starblaster's sleek silver hull.

But it works.

She walks to the settlement.

It looks like all of its residents have come out to greet her. She breathes a sigh of relief - they're dressed in bright colors. She feels a little less vulnerable in a striking red uniform, in a stark white world.

"Hello," she starts. She gives a slight bow for good measure. You never know.

A child starts running before getting caught by an adult. Undeterred, the child just asks instead of sprinting all the way to the Starblaster. "Is that a spaceship? Did you come here from the sun? You're an alien, right? Are you gonna eat our brains?"

Lucretia smiles at the kid. "I'm not gonna eat any brains, gross. But I did come from very far, and I'm alone, and I'm confused. Can I ask for some help?"

An elven man steps forward. Everyone is much, much taller than she would expect. "Where are you from?"

Cold honesty or convenient lies? Magnus, Lup, Magnus, Lup-- she picks Magnus. "I'm from another planar system. My ship lets me travel through them once a year."

The elf frowns. "And you're conducting this travel alone?"

"No. I had a crew, but--" She swallows. She won't cry in front of these people, damn it. "But they seem to have landed into the city. I believe-- is there any chance they aren't dead?"

"I mean," a woman from the back says. "If you flew around the city, the Judges probably had to have taken your friends to court. If that's the case, they should be fine as long as they're pure of heart."

Lucretia winces. "Right. Of course."

The woman sees her wince, and winces herself. "Oh, poor thing... Your entire crew? That's horrible..."

Lucretia looks off to the side.

The elven man walks up to Lucretia. "Here, why don't you stay with us for the night? It looks like your ship has been damaged, and you've just lost your crew. You deserve some rest. We can do some repairs in the morning, yes?"

Lucretia breathes a sigh of relief. Three days she was under the lake. "Yes, that would be lovely, thank you."

  
  
  
  
  
  


She wakes up to very loud, very distressed humming.

She's out the tent with her wand at the ready before she has a second thought.

The elven man is there. Along with four others. At the ship.

"What the fuck are you doing?" Lucretia yells. She shoots before they can do anything else, running at them barefoot.

Fisher hums louder - it's deafening - it's yelling back for her.

Someone grabs her from behind. She flails around, kicking and screaming, anyone else would've been out of this hold already, why her, why did it have to be her--

The elf and his squad try to pick apart the panel that opens the door into the Starblaster.

Lucretia shoves an elbow into the face of whoever's holding her - it's the woman from before, she shared a tent with her,  _ she could've fucking killed her  _ \- and shoots again, runs again, screams again.

The squad all scatter away from the door. One of them throws a knife, but Lucretia has one goal and one goal only; survive on the ship. That's all she has to do. Forget the knife. Forget the blood.

She pops inside the ship before any of them can follow her. She can see them banging on the door, on the glass, anywhere they think it'll make a difference.

She takes off.

  
  
  
  
  


Stupid. Why had she been so hopeful? There have been plenty of hostile planets already. She shouldn't have relied on kindness. Not so blindly.

  
  
  
  
  


The next settlement she lands near looks as confused as she is. They do not wait until the middle of the night to make an attempt at the ship. They attack her mere minutes into their first conversation.

One of them gets on the ship with her. She's disgusted that she has to throw the body off the side of the ship and hope it lands somewhere where it can be picked up.

  
  
  
  
  
  


Again. What would Davenport do?

("It should've been him, Fisher. It should've been him.")

Well, the city didn't work. The settlements outside of it didn't work. Nobody here looks willing to take in a stranger. Or maybe they would've been, if she didn't have the ship with her. The scavengers really want that shiny silver metal.

She records everything, of course she does. It's a stabbing pain through her guts that she doesn't have the luxury of writing down what others do. She has to  _ do _ herself, _ then _ record. It hurts. Again and again she keeps expecting one of them to poke their head around a corner to let her know what they're going to try next.

But they're not here.

She's alone.

So. Davenport.

_ Look for a secure location. The locals are hostile, so find someplace isolated. _

Lucretia finds a cliff. She lands at the bottom of it.

It covers the ship enough and it's near water. Safe for now, at least.

She's not enough to man this ship. She can't pilot it, she's not sure how to care for Fisher. And she needs to care for herself too?

Gods damn it.

Okay, focus. Food. 

The Starblaster is stocked to last a couple months, but then what? Lucretia would rather forage for some fresh food and keep the conserves for when she can't go out.

("I'll be right back. You'll be fine for a couple of hours... or days? Yes?")

The pale rock is as colorless as ever, and, now alone, she's exposed in her bright red uniform.

But she won't take it off. It's enough that their dead bodies lie broken somewhere in the city. She will not remove the one piece of clothing that signaled them as a team.

She grits her teeth.

She searches for her inner Merle as she treks along the hostile terrain. There's caves all over the place, but she can't for the life of her take a guess at which ones would fit a person inside, or which ones might have something edible in them. For all she knows, they could all be rabbit holes.

There's little to no flora to speak of - wild and thin plants sprouting stubbornly from in between cracks in the rock, just as pale as the rest of it.

She grips the hem of her jacket. Fuck it - she ducks into the next cave she comes across.

It's dark and dry, and empty. She puts her head in her hands and rests for a moment.

  
  
  
  
  


Some caves are humid. The dry ones are always empty, always small - just tiny indents in the stone, really, most of them too small to fit Lucretia - but for humidity to develop, there must be space enough for the shade to take root and dig deep. And find water.

The cave water is not drinkable, she finds out. Nothing a spell can't fix, but a spell is still a spell. She doesn't have the slots or the knowledge for this.

It's a mix of Merle and Barry that got her even this far in figuring out all that. She'd rather not take many chances with water.

The food, though.

The greenery is more generous in here. Oh, it's still lacking color - and taste, frankly - but it's food.

  
  
  
  
  
  


She paints another painting for Fisher. This one is all in black-and-white, she's starting to lose it here alone. She sings as she paints it, and Fisher hums back.

She misses them.

  
  
  
  
  


She goes up on the cliff that hides the ship from view. She can't remember what brought her up here, she immediately gets distracted by the view.

It's a whole army. One of the Judges marches with them.

They're close enough that they see her up on the cliff.

She runs down and takes off.

Something collides with the ship.

  
  
  
  
  


This planet doesn't have any moons. It would be a good place to hide.

  
  
  
  


Thankfully, this one didn't tear a new hole into the hull. Terribly, she can't take a pause and fix it.

Davenport would never let the ship fly so slow--

She runs to the stern and checks the engine. It wasn't hit, thank Gods. There's a deep deep indent at the far back of the starboard, but the engine is fine.

Behind the engine, the army runs for her. The Judge's steps move so fast.

Another spell shoots in her direction, catching the belly of the ship this time. Starblaster doesn't have a keel - it's a spaceship for fuck's sake - but Lucretia still worries for the structure.

She casts a shield as wide as she can.

It barely does anything.

She lets out a yell and flings some fire at the army. Think Lup, think Lup. She brings up some rock and curves it around itself, throwing off the army and blocking their path.

The Judge is not as easy to deter.

She throws fire after fire after fire at them, but for every spell that shoots out her wand there seems to be another ten flying in her direction - most of them hitting their mark. She puts up a shield and then another and then the Judge is within grabbing reach.

She casts a small sun over their eyes. It blinds her too, but she's flying on auto-pilot. The Judge will need to get its sight back or risk stepping on its own army.

She only stumbles into walls twice on her way back to the helm.

  
  
  
  
  


If this planet had a moon. Oh, if this planet had a moon. She could just fly there and hide out for the rest of the year. Not even the Judges could touch her. No magic could reach her.

She'd be safe, and she'd be entirely, painfully lonely.

  
  
  
  
  
  


She goes for it.

As soon as she repairs the hull - no holes, thank fuck, but those dents were still a bitch to work out - she directs the autopilot up and up and up until she's out of the planet's atmosphere.

"Fisher, if I don't wake up in ten hours, wake me up yourself."

She drops onto her bed.

  
  
  
  
  
  


She wakes up two days later with a fever and panics.

Merle Merle Merle - Nausea? Yes? No? Not sure. Dizziness? Some. Focus? Yes. Senses? Sight is razor-sharp, touch is good, mouth dry and nose kinda neutral, she can hear the bond engine humming in the far back.

Causes? Maybe sleeping for fifty hours straight? Maybe the water from down planetside? The food? Illness? Did she get hit with a spell or something?

She really fucking wishes Merle was here. She can only guess so much.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


She paints them a portrait. Davenport and Merle. She tries to do it from memory. It doesn't go so well.

She tries to draw the twins, next, and that goes even worse. She can't even get them to look like each other on paper, much less like what they actually look like in the flesh.

Magnus and Barry maybe? She's going by height at this point. She gets ten lines into the sketch of this one then gives up with a grunt of frustration and, frankly, grief.

She feeds the sketches to Fisher. If she makes it through this year alive and gets to see them all again, she'd rather them not find this kind of embarrassing art here.

Fisher seems to like it.

  
  
  
  
  
  


From up here she can see the entirety of that lake. Just barely - any closer and she'd only be seeing part of it.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


She goes through half the food stock on board before she pulls the ship out of orbit and back down onto the planet. She does not want to run out.

She makes sure to land far far away from the lake - she'd like to go on the exact opposite side of the planet, but that part is an ocean. She needs land.

She needs food.

On this part of the planet the colors are still lacking but the greys are all darker than they were lakeside. There's not a white rock to be seen.

This dark rock is softer - fewer caves, but the outside plants are thicker. She picks up as many in number and variety as she can and rushes back to the ship. She can go through them from up in orbit.

  
  
  
  
  
  


Nothing of what she picked up is edible.

One plant's roots can be pickled into edibility but that would just take so long.

She goes back down on another part of the planet.

  
  
  
  
  
  


The pickle plant turns out tasting like bark.

She goes looking for books on the ship. Thankfully she doesn't have to go rifling through her family's underwear before she finds a spellbook with purifying spells on it.

  
  
  
  
  
  


They were waiting for her, this time.The  marauders. She's been in orbit for months, word of her travels down to the surface must've made their rounds.

She does not hesitate to scream and spell and snarl and spite.

She summons Lup's power and Taako's resolve and Magnus' strength and courage and rage and she  _ fights. _

The Judges had called them sins, but the thought of them got Lucretia this far. These aspects of her friends that the rulers of this world had so easily doomed them for. Thinking about them was enough for her to survive, so who sins now, fuckers?

Blood between her teeth, she's not entirely sure it's her own. She can almost hear Magnus' laughter. 

He'd always enjoyed the "it's not mine" line, no matter who on the team said it.

She grins along with her memory of that laugh.

She holds it close to her chest.

  
  
  
  
  
  


The engine still runs strong. Of course it does.

Just the thought of them is enough.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


She spends some time figuring out how to speed up the pickling of that bark-tasting root. Of everything she's tried to eat here, this is the one thing that she finds in abundance and doesn't make her sick. Plus, it's filling enough that a good handfull of the stuff can last her for a good few hours.

As soon as she finds the fastest pickling method (three full days) she gets a ridiculous amount of the stuff up on the ship.

Then, once she has that covered, she gets to start worrying about the variety of her diet.

When she thinks of Merle in regards to food, she'd rather think of the foraging skills he's taught the crew, not reasons why she knows what bark tastes like.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


It's come to the point where she'd rather burn slots purifying food than have another taste of even an ounce of barkroot pickle. She hates that she's even named the thing.

She's on the second day on a foraging trip when Fisher starts humming, a low noise rapidly picking up volume and pitch.

She knows enough to go running before she can hesitate.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


The other problem with being in orbit, of course, is that the Starblaster was only supposed to be in space for two months. It has a time limit. It needs air to freshen up the air it makes, water to clear out the water it filters.

She burns more slots purifying.

All water on this planet is sweet, she finds out. Even the ocean water. How none of it is drinkable is still beyond her, but at least she doesn't have to worry about that with a ship this great.

The engine is still running strong.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


Finally, finally, she manages to pin down a portrait from memory. It's of Lup and Barry and it took a lot of pouring over portraits and studies and sketches Lucretia's drawn of them before.

She pins it up on a wall where she'll see it often.

She keeps trying.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


She manages to draw Davenport next, but only because she was trying so hard to figure his portrait out. As much time as she spends in the helm now, she paints him mid-flight, both hands over the controls.

It looks like him.

She keeps trying.

  
  
  
  
  
  


She tries for Taako and Lup next. She got Lup once, surely she can get her again? And her twin, maybe? It doesn't really work out, but that doesn't stop her.

  
  
  
  
  
  


She actually manages to get a pretty good sketch of Magnus completely by accident. She hadn't even been planning on turning this sketch into a painting, and now she's hesitant to do so.

Well, she won't. The sketch gets him real good, and she hadn't looked at a reference in days. She's pretty proud of it.

She keeps trying, a smile on her face.

  
  
  
  
  
  


She remembers a time when Davenport and Merle had tried to teach Taako their incredibly complicated and custom-ruled card game, just because Taako had said he could figure out a way to cheat at anything and Merle had said that this game was specifically structured so it was impossible to cheat.

She paints them hunched over the table. They hadn't managed to teach Taako the game, but they still spent the entire evening poking fun at each other.

The painting comes out pretty good. More of a genre-painting than a portrait, but everyone looks like themselves, and the room looks like itself, so she calls it successful.

She smiles.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


The engine still roars.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


It's hard to tell, in this colorless world, when The Hunger is starts its approach. There's no green grass to lose its color, no blue sky.

There's plenty of cold and warm and dark and bright, so she goes down to planetside and waits for it all to lose its intensity.

It occurs to her that she never looked for the Light. She didn't even see where it landed.

But she couldn't have. She barely had enough leeway to look for food.

The shadows are a little less dark, the sun shines a little less bright. She counts ten hours and gets on the ship.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


They're terrifying when they come down. Icky tar and black opal, thousands upon thousands of twisted creatures descending from hell.

Lucretia flies away. The Hunger hunts her, of course. She can't just pass by it.

She grits her teeth. Davenport and a bit of Taako.

She manages to leave the plane. To her horror she realizes she's not sure how to leave the system. She just screams and punches the throttle.

Through whatever higher force gives Davenport his steering skills - or whatever force gives Taako his perseverance skills - she manages to summon some overflow shred of Bond and kick the engine up to the correct speed.

She's out the system.

Then, light -

Threads weave through the Starblaster, and Lucretia gets unweaved from the helm and out onto the deck with everyone else.

Everyone--

Everyone else, yes, Magnus has a black eye, Merle has a cut on his forehead--

Lucretia collapses.

She finally breathes an easy breath, for the first time in a whole year.


End file.
